Art can transport us across the globe. Florence, Italy, is the scene in this hand-painted illustration from an early printed book, The Nuremberg Chronicle. This popular book ignited 15th-century imaginations, offering new ideas, cultures and locales. While travel at the time could be expensive and arduous, illustrated books offered avenues of learning and virtual traveling.
Today, we research and plan travel online, or we enjoy the tradition of leafing through guidebooks. Both help unlock the secrets and rhythms of communities beyond our own, just like this medieval book. It illuminates ideas through the vibrant visualization of text and image.
For millennia, art has offered a means of pilgrimage in one's mind. Devotional meditation can be aided by religious imagery, inviting us to connect spiritually with images of people, architecture and nature. Here, the spectacular Florentine Cathedral Duomo and Tower rise prominently from the city center, displaying Florence’s spiritual heart.
Joanna Reiling Lindell is vice president of Audience & Experiential Engagement at Thrivent and chief curator of the Thrivent Art Collection.
On view now
Our current exhibition in the Minneapolis Gallery is Creatures of Creation. This exhibition explores the presence of animals in art across centuries, revealing their enduring importance and central place in human creativity.
